One of the downsides of being a freelance composer is that you invariably run into hidden crunch. When you have multiple clients (by necessity, in order to sustain your income), none of them really have any idea about what else you have going on. So deadlines can start to compound and overlap in very inconvenient ways. In my experience, this happens more often than not. It’s just one of those realities of being a freelancer.

There aren’t really a lot of ways to mitigate this, either, because deadlines are deadlines and there’s rarely much you can do other than A) be transparent about the situation to all parties and/or B) hire on additional help to pick up the pace. A won’t always do much, because clients have deadlines too and can’t always wait on you. And often times, particularly in your early career, B is out of reach financially. So quite often, you simply end up overworked, overstressed and with deteriorating mental and physical health. Even when you love what you do, it can be overwhelming and can threaten to sap the very joy out of it.

Ideally, what happens as you progress through your career is that B becomes more attainable because you’re earning more money, and A also becomes more effective because you don’t have to take on quite as many projects in order to stay afloat. But a lot of people don’t ever get there. In fact, it’s a pretty extreme minority of people who end up in that enviable position within the industry. I am fortunate enough to be in a position where I am actually turning down work on occasion, but I also am nowhere near that lovely sweet spot. This is one of the many reasons why most people can’t or won’t stick it out until their career takes off.

Frankly, I don’t have an answer for how to solve this problem. The old addage “if it were easy, anyone would do it” does indeed apply here, but I am also the first to recognize that sacrificing health for a career is a pretty toxic mentality, whether it’s necessary in the short term or not. This cognative dissonance is something I meditate on quite often.

This is also further complicated by the fact that I, personally, have had some of my best experiences on projects where I’m putting in 16+ hour days and sprinting like mad. This has been the case on everything from being a lowly copyist on AAA films and games to writing my own stuff: being in the zone and putting everything you’ve got into something that you love is an amazing feeling. I am certainly not alone in this either, as most of the more successful people I know are like this too. So it’s a complicated issue.

This is also a big part of the reason why I haven’t posted anything for the past few months. Rest assured, though, that once I’m out of this insane sprint and after perhaps the first full-week vacation I’ve had in something like seven years, I will have a mountain of things to post and talk about all over my website and social media. Until then, wish me luck!